Part 3The Day You Forgot Me to Death

By nightfall, the salt air turned cool, carrying the scent of fried oysters and woodsmoke from the open-air deck of the marina bar.

A live acoustic guitar played somewhere near the docks. Brooke was three Long Island iced teas deep, her cheeks glowing a deep, wine-stained crimson.

“Garrett,” she mumbled, her head lolling sideways until her temple rested against his bicep. “The room’s spinning.”

Garrett didn’t pull away. He held his beer with one hand, his other arm stretched across the weathered wooden back of her chair, hovering inches from her bare shoulder.

“I told you not to order the third one. You have zero tolerance.”

“I’m celebrating,” Brooke whispered, tilting her face up to look at him, her eyes heavy and liquid. “Garrett... don’t you ever feel like you’re choking? Going home to that apartment every single day?”

Garrett’s hand tightened around the amber glass of his bottle. “Don’t start, Brooke.”

“I’m not starting anything. I’m just being honest.” Her voice took on that slurred, petulant cadence she always used when she wanted to be excused for cruelty. “Even with that plastic mask on... at night, when the lights are off, it’s terrifying. You walk through the door after ten hours at the firm, and there’s no smile. Just silence. Just that smell.”

Garrett didn’t speak. He rotated the beer bottle on the wet ring it had left on the wood.

“She’s my fiancée,” he said, but the word sounded hollow, like a legal clause read aloud in a deposition.

“You’re not married yet,” Brooke pressed, shifting her hips closer to his on the bench. “And that fire... it was an accident. We were just joking around. How were we supposed to know the wiring was rotten? We’ve played nursemaid for three months. We gave up our entire summer. We’ve paid our penance, Garrett.”

Garrett’s jaw twitched. “Brooke. Drop it.”

“Tell me I’m lying,” she murmured, her fingertips brushing the sleeve of his shirt. “Look me in the eye and tell me what you feel when you look at her. Is it love? Or is it just pity?”

Garrett gave no answer. He tipped his head back and drained the remaining half of his beer in three long, desperate gulps.

Hovering above them in the cool night wind, watching Garrett’s shifting, evasive eyes, I felt entirely hollow. There was no rage left, only the cold comfort of confirmation.

I had known for weeks.

A month ago, it was time for my dressing change. The clinic had been strict: the medical gauze covering my facial debridements had to be swapped every seventy-two hours to prevent Pseudomonas infections.

Brooke had gone out to meet a client, leaving Garrett home with me. I carried the sterile saline, the gauze packs, and the silver sulfadiazine into the living room.

“Garrett, can you help me with the tape? I can’t reach the angle behind my ear.”

Garrett was on the sofa, a controller in his hand, locked into an online match. He glanced up, his eyes darting away from my face almost instantly.

“Yeah. Just let me finish this round, Neens. Ten minutes.”

I sat on the ottoman and waited. Ten minutes passed. A new match loaded.

“Garrett.”

He let out an audible, weary sigh, tossed the controller onto the cushion, and snapped on the latex gloves.

As he unwound the layers of gauze from my jaw, the warm, sour odor of serous fluid, medicinal ointment, and healing tissue drifted into the air.

I saw it clearly: the violent shudder in Garrett’s throat.

He stopped breathing through his nose. His jaw clenched so hard his cheek muscles twitched, and for a split second, a look of visceral, unmistakable disgust flickered across his eyes before he could mask it.

“Does it smell bad?” I asked quietly.

Garrett’s hands stiffened. “No. Don’t be paranoid.”

He didn’t use the sterile gauze to wipe away the exudate the way the nurses had shown him. He rushed, dabbing iodine haphazardly over the raw, pink-and-yellow flesh, barely letting it dry before slapping the fresh pads over my face and securing the medical tape with clumsy, trembling fingers.

“Done.”

He tore the gloves off, threw them into the bin, and immediately pushed open the balcony door.

“I need some air. Stepping out for a smoke.”

I sat alone on the ottoman for an hour, listening to the heavy, frantic drags he took on his cigarette, pulling clean coastal air deep into his lungs as if he were trying to wash away the scent of my rot.

When Brooke came home that evening and heard him complain about the apartment smelling like a burn ward, she went straight to the pharmacy and bought four cans of lavender aerosol. She walked through every room, spraying thick, choking clouds of synthetic flowers while holding her sleeve over her nose.

“Don't take it personally, Nina! It’s just so hot out, we have to keep the air fresh.”

I never asked either of them to touch my dressings again. I learned to stand in front of the bathroom mirror, holding a handheld mirror with my left hand while my right hand picked the dried crusts of blood and pus away with tweezers, tear tracks burning lines through the raw nerve endings.

“Garrett?”

Brooke’s voice was thicker now, heavy with sleep and rum.

“If my face got burned off... would you take care of me like this?”

Garrett turned to look at her. The salt wind lifted her long, dark hair, exposing her unblemished forehead, her smooth, glowing cheeks, the soft pink curve of her lips. A whole, untouched woman.

Garrett raised his hand, his thumb tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered against the curve of her jaw.

“You’re never going to get burned,” he said softly.

The tenderness in his voice was sickening. Brooke smiled, closing her eyes, and let her head rest fully against the crook of his neck.

This time, Garrett didn’t pull away.